


Three's a charm

by isamariposa



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: BAMF Hela (Marvel), Brother-Sister Relationships, Brothers, Canon Divergence - Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Fluff, Family Dynamics, Fix-It, Gen, Happy Ending, Little Brothers, Odin (Marvel)'s A+ Parenting, Odin sucks, Thanos (Marvel) Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-09-13 18:45:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16897959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isamariposa/pseuds/isamariposa
Summary: Thor hasn't returned post TDW, and Hela shows up in Asgard while Loki is still pretending to be Odin. He decides to play along.It... does not go well.But when Thanos comes for the Tesseract, fratricide might have to be put off for a little longer.Ragnarok and Infinity War fix-it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe it took me this long to get sucked into this fandom! 
> 
> Some of the plot points are inspired by various discussions on FFA. Some dialogue is lifted from the movies.
> 
> NB: later chapters are a lot less fragmented than this first.

 

* * *

 

As he sits on Odin's throne for the first time, still reeling from the exhilaration of having confined his so-called father to the indignity of a Midgard sick-house, Loki reckons the greatest obstacle to a long, prosperous reign of his own will be his brother.

He is wrong.

 

* * *

 

It's nice, at first. He is respected and revered and it's everything he's ever wanted. While he does revel in it, it is, in the end, Odin's appearance that he must wear to be so well-beloved. Not his own. It wounds him, just subtly at first, but as months go by it cuts so deeply it is a wonder his projection does not also bleed. They would never love him as Loki (they never did). Even less so in his monstrous Jotun form that he rarely allows himself to morph into. It's fitting, he thinks, that in his greatest moment of triumph he must still pretend to be what he is not, like he has since infancy.

His birthright wasn't to die.

It was to lie.

 

* * *

 

He knows Heimdall knows.

Loki should kill him - it would be cleaner. It would certainly make his life in court easier, without his disapproval weighing on him. But it's too much of a hassle to murder him, and the public outrage would be too great. Loki wants no political unrest, not this early, and not when exile is a perfect solution. After all, Heimdall did go against Odin when he helped Thor escape with his little mortal.

"Lies may roam wild for a year, but truth rejoins them in one day," Heimdall tells him, cryptically, as the fake-Odin banishes him from the Palace.

"Betraying your liege is also a lie," Loki reminds him.

Keeping him alive is just a little weakness. Loki can afford to be weak for now, and to enjoy himself. Thor's return is what he should be concerned about.

 

* * *

 

He tries to clear his name. It's surprisingly less of the ordeal he expected, given how enthusiastic his brother was to praise his heroic sacrifice on Svartalfheim. He allows himself to feel vague guilt - oh, very briefly - before he chuckles and waves the notion away. He commissions a statue, a great saga, and a light-hearted play to honor Loki. The people of Asgard react with bemusement rather than the warmth he so craves, but it's a start. One day they will come to love him for what he is. Whatever it is that he is.

But playing an old man, Allfather or not, is more stifling than he can bear, at times. He starts leaving a convincing illusion in the throne room, seemingly lost in thought, while he roams free around Asgard with no purpose at all. He dreads the day Thor will return and uncover his farce, but also, he starts longing for it. It will be such fun. Loki's laughter resonates deep in Asgard's mountains. In the throne room, the fake Odin smiles.

He's being reckless, and he doesn't care.

 

* * *

 

He feels a sudden surge of dread one morning, just as he is lounging on his father's bed. He coughs as he sits up, spitting out sand. Strange.

"Has my son returned?" he asks one of the guards outside his bedchambers, mouth covered.

"Not to my knowledge, my Lord. Shall I enquire with the Bifrost chambers?"

"Do," Loki commands, and makes his way to the throne room with marked unease.

It isn't Thor. He would not feel like this if it were Thor.

He sends the guards and the rest of the court away, because he cannot stop coughing, and instead of sand he is now sputtering up blood, as if he were afflicted with one of those virulent plagues that afflict mortals. Odin. Perhaps the real Odin is dying of a Midgard plague, and Loki is suffering the consequences through his spell. He closes his eyes to examine his handiwork more easily. The intangible thread of magic linking him to his so-called father has thinned, alarmingly so. He can hear his ragged breath, the pain in his lungs, the fever in his body. How can he be sick! Loki mutters a curse. He should have paid more attention. How was he to know the Allfather could succumb to puny mortal plagues? This wasn't supposed to happen.

A flash in the horizon. Thor? Loki makes his way to the terrace, or tries to, but the coughing won't let him walk that far. He crawls back to the throne, struggling to breathe. The earth quakes under Loki's feet. The throne room shakes with unnatural violence, as if it were to collapse on him. His first instinct is to run, evidently. But he's worked too hard for this throne, and he will not give it up without a fight. A small fight. Non-deadly, preferably, though the heavy steps approaching and the screams in their wake do sound a little ominous.

A horned creature steps in the throne room. A woman. Oddly resembling him.

"Who are you?" Loki asks, between two fits of coughing, and momentarily forgetting he is wearing Odin's body.

"Who are _you_?" she fires back, haughty and demanding like a queen.

She walks closer before Loki can scream for guards. Where are they? Where is everybody? Now would be an excellent moment to disappear, and yet he does not move, his own curiosity allowing her to stare at him, to smell him, to examine him critically.

"Impostor," she hisses. "What are you? Where is he?"

"Bit of a long story," Loki says, and smiles. He waves his Odin form away - the less magic he burdens himself with, the quicker he can disappear if needed be. He finally stops coughing. Her eyes narrow.

"Jotun scum," she says, and a deep, unsettling rage burns deep within her gaze. "Are you trying to mock me?"

"What?" Loki asks, and realizes she must be taking offence at how alike they are - thinking he is doing it on purpose. "Oh. This is how I usually look, I assure you." She snarls at him, and he raises an eyebrow. "Who are you?" he asks again.

"I will not stand here in my throne room to be questioned by some frost-giant excuse of a sorcerer. Kneel at once or die."

"I beg your pardon? Your throne room?" Loki repeats, more amused than afraid. He lets out a chuckle. A nervous one, but a chuckle nonetheless.

"If you killed my father, you have my thanks, but you shall not take his throne. It is mine by right. You will die for your crime."

"I did not kill him, not yet. The old man still lives," Loki protests without thinking, but then registers the rest of her sentence. "What did you say? Your _father_?"

"I am Hela, Odin's firstborn. Stand aside, impostor. I will not ask you again."

A sister. Loki does laugh this time. He laughs and laughs until tears spill from his eyes. She only stares at him with disdain, trembling with rage, her long dark sword unsheathed. When she thrusts it forward to slay him, he rolls down from the throne, between her legs and down the stairs. He is still laughing as he scrambles to his feet.

"Sister," he says, with the most charming smile can he manage, under the circumstances. "Surely you do not intend to start your reign by slaughtering your youngest brother?"

That gives her pause, just briefly.

"I have no brothers," she states, and brandishes her sword again.

"Oh, but you do," Loki says, and disappears in a blink to reappear a little further away from her. "My name is Loki. And believe me, I am the least of your worries if the throne is what you seek."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a bit overwhelmed by the good reception of the first chapter! I'm used to smaller fandoms. Thank you! I hope you all continue enjoying this ♥

 

* * *

 

The resemblance _is_ uncanny, and Loki wonders at it even as he dodges the fratricidal thrusts of her blade. One of Odin's jokes, undoubtedly. He'd seen fit to clothe a little Jotun baby like another of his children. Or maybe Loki found Odin's weakness somewhere in his mind and mirrored his secrets to guarantee his own survival. Dark hair, slender limbs, pale blue eyes. And the anger. Hers burns violent and uncontrollable, unlike his simmering, suffocating fury, but it reeks of just the same foul smell. Odin's wrongdoings, leaving lashes deep within their psyches. He grins at her. Hela doesn't smile back, but she does lower her sword, and her horns morph back into hair as she drops her hostile stance. Like recognizes like.

Loki stops his dancing around her, and crosses his arms behind his back.

"You could have asked nicely, you know," he tells her. "It was getting dreadfully boring around here."

"Is that so," is all she says.

Hela makes her way up the steps to the throne still facing him, as if expecting him to attack her. When he does not, she sits, and crosses her legs. It does infuriate him, of course, to see her sit placidly on the throne he's all but relinquished to her. But what else is he to do? The absence of the guards speaks volumes. Loki can defend  himself with magic and stall her, but he likely cannot take her down in single combat yet. No. It's best to observe her, and to learn. He begins weaving an invisible armor around himself, not believing for one moment he's seen the last of her aggression.

"He never spoke of you," he says, and if she's anything like him this should hurt her. "Not once."

It works. Hela flinches.

"Of couldn't he didn't," she snarls, her words dripping bitterness.

She throws her sword so suddenly that Loki ducks, expecting the attacks to resume, but he finds that she sent the sword upwards to impale it against the ceiling. It cracks visibly.

"Look at these lies," she says. "Goblets and garden parties? Peace treaties? Odin was proud to have all this, but he was ashamed of how he got it."

She throws another blade up, and then another. All the frescoes begin to crack. The paintings of Odin, Frigga, Thor and Loki fall to pieces as the rocks crash down on the throne room. Loki steps aside fastidiously to avoid the debris. But he cannot hold back a gasp when he looks up. Another set of frescoes were buried underneath the ones she just destroyed, entirely real and not an illusion that she has conjured. Hela is in all of them, seated at Odin's right, commanding his army. There is blood everywhere. Blood, fire and death.

"We were unstoppable," Hela says, her grief raw and genuine. Loki believes her. "I was his weapon in the conquest that built Asgard's empire. One by one, the realms became ours. But one day, he decided to become a benevolent king. I was of no use to him. He banished me. Caged me. Locked me away like an animal."

They crushed the nine realms together, brought ruin upon them for the glory of Asgard. But their father covered her up. Wrote her out of their stories, to favor his new son. (Not _sons_. Loki is not as naïve as he once was.) Odin was always a liar. Loki finds it hard to breathe. He blames the debris, but he knows that is not the reason.

"He caged me too," he says, his voice raspy. An old anger surges through him, hot and swift like the lash of a whip. He makes a brisk gesture to shove the debris from the ceiling to the side of the throne room, past the columns – Odin and Frigga swept to the side unceremoniously. "For trying to take over Midgard."

"Midgard!" She scoffs at this. "Hypocrite. Midgard was ours, once, and we reigned over them like gods. Our destiny is to rule over all others. And I am here to restore that power." She flashes him a wolfish grin. "If you still want Midgard, it will be yours. Kneel before me, little brother, and join me."

Loki hesitates. _Does_ he still want Midgard all to himself? It's a pleasant enough thought: his father's commands torn to pieces, Thor's pesky little friends eliminated and Loki reigning alone in his brother's affections. But he thinks of the way Thor had looked at him in Svartalfheim, of the way he'd held him in his arms as he pretended to die. That is... closer to what Loki wants. Not that puny, smelly little planet full of groveling, insignificant creatures - Loki borrowed someone else's plan and ran along with it to the bitter end. None of it may matter at all now: with the Stones being hunted, the fate of the Universe hangs by a very, very thin thread. But trying to bring havoc to Midgard again should be fun, he thinks, to see Thor all riled up about it.

"Midgard," he says slowly, as if considering it. "And what else?"

"What _else_?" She raises an eyebrow. "This is not a negotiation. Are you half-witted or merely audacious?"

"Audacious? I too am a Prince," he argues, "and I will not kneel. If I'm to stand with you, Odin's firstborn, I want to know what's in it for me."

"How about the privilege of staying alive?" She leans forward, closer to him, death dancing in her icy eyes. "Kneel," she repeats drawing out that single syllable into a terrifying hiss.

He cocks his head. "How about no?"

"Then you will die."

She summons one of the swords she impaled on the ceiling, and Loki barely dodges it in time. It crashes against a column behind him – the throne room shakes from the impact. He's finished crafting the invisible armor around himself, but he begins wondering whether it'll withstand the force of her blows at all.

"I'll be of more use to you alive than dead," he offers, obsequious, still ducking under her blows. "I know where the old man is. I can soften my brother's wrath. And forgive me for saying this, but I don't quite get the impression that diplomacy is your forte, is it now?"

"Be silent and die," Hela roars.

"Oh fine," Loki says with an exasperated sigh. Those dark swords really are a pain to dodge. "Very well, you win. I kneel before you, sister."

He disappears at once and conjures up an illusion of himself kneeling before her obediently. It doesn't count if it isn't really him, he tells himself, like a child crossing his fingers behind his back to invalidate a promise. Hela doesn't seem to notice (or to mind?). She seems appeased. Good.

Loki is the God of Mischief, and he will kneel before no one.

 

* * *

 

"Ale? Wine?" he offers, stepping to the side of the throne to where the drinks are kept. "Tea?" he adds with a wry smile, knowing she will refuse at least that.

"I only drink the blood of my enemies," Hela says, pompous and disdainful, her grip tight on the armrests of Odin's throne.

"Ah." Loki makes a face. "Forgive me for not finding that appealing. I'll have some wine myself, if you don't mind."

He knows she is studying him, when he has his back to her. He spares a brief thought for his mother – but not too long, for fear of the grief distracting him when he needs all his wits about him. Frigga would know what spell to use in this situation. Perhaps Loki should tie Hela to the throne she's all but stolen from him, since she likes it so much: weave a spider web around her to trap her like a fly. As he starts pouring the wine, Loki reaches towards Hela intangibly, but meets unexpected resistance. She is guarded against him. That, or she cannot be hurt by lesser spells. He huffs. Must this be so difficult?

Once the wine is poured, he turns to face her, a cup in his hand and a smirk on his lips. There is nowhere else to sit in the throne room, so he settles on the lower steps before it, glancing up at her as he sips on his drink and studying her for weaknesses. Hela deigns smiling back at him, evidently pleased with his apparent submission.

"If he isn't yet dead," she says, staring at him intently, "then he is surely dying. I could not have escaped my prison otherwise."

"I exiled him to Midgard," Loki says.

Hela looks at him _fondly_ as he tells her this is – a coarse, barely recognizable fondness but fondness nevertheless. It's... not unpleasant. Being on the receiving end of familial pride is foreign and intoxicating like the wine that warms his belly. It _was_ one of his finer moments, after all. A little dizzy, Loki conjures up a window in the air, to see what it is that Odin is doing. The Allfather lies on a Midgard sick-bed, pale, unmoving, tended to by women dressed in white. His good eye is closed. He looks terribly old. Pained. Loki frowns. He ought to feel pride to see his handiwork, not this unexpected pity. He clenches his jaw.

"It will not be long," Hela says. "I know death when I see it. You're a worthy son."

"A worthy son?" Loki snarls. He wanted to be worthy of Odin, once. It had not worked. "Worthy sons kill their fathers, now?"

"How do you think Odin became King of Asgard?" Hela asks, a disquieting, cold smile on her lips.

Loki glances up at the old frescoes on the ceiling, and wonders if there is a third layer hidden underneath.

"That is not a story you will find on the walls of this palace," Hela tells him, following his glance. "He killed Bor in cold blood when he begrudged him lordship of a realm we had just conquered. I saw it. I was his beloved child, and I saw him become King."

Loki stays silent. He's never heard that story. It goes against everything he knows about Asgard. His father as a cold-blooded murderer and a bloodthirsty warrior is still a hard sell, frescoes notwithstanding, but he senses no deceit in Hela. She does not strike him as cunning: her words are but the cruel truth.

"Such is the way of the gods, little brother. You should go finish what you started."

"Me? Are you certain?" he taunts. "Would that not make me the new King? I somehow feel you would not agree to that, considering you just ousted me from the throne."

She growls at this. "You're a funny little one, aren't you? Do you think yourself funny?"

"Just so," he tells her, his smirk unwavering. "But I did not mean to kill him when I exiled him. To be quite frank, I had not thought that far ahead."

"I think I have my answer to my earlier question now. You _are_ a half-wit," she says, her repartee brutal and disquieting unlike Loki's playful sarcasm. It wounds him more than he'd care to admit.

"I did not think Midgard illnesses could take root in him!" he protests.

Hela leans forward, staring into the window Loki created to appraise their dying father. She shrugs.

"Midgard is ridden with plagues that Odin did not create himself. He is not immune to them." She leans back on the throne and crosses her legs. "Very well. If you lack the courage to do it yourself, I will finish what you started, Loki the Unfunny, and I will become Queen."

"Ah. There's just one little, tiny, insignificant obstacle to that plan," Loki says, waving the window illusion away and standing up to face her fully. "I've been trying to warn you for a good half-hour now." He tilts his head and smiles at her. "I think you will find Thor a lot less pliant than me when it comes to patricide."

Her eyes narrow. "What is he like?"

_How long do you have?_ Loki thinks. "He is just and righteous and fair," he says. "Everything our lying father strived to become after he cast you away."

Is it two against one, at long last? Loki feels a shiver of excitement running through him. He never had that luxury growing up. And if anyone can describe how brave and charming and annoyingly perfect Thor can be, it's definitely Loki. He tells her, then, about all his brother has accomplished, and finds he doesn't need to lie much at all – Thor's actions are inherently irritating. But Hela waves her hand away as if utterly unimpressed.

"A brute with a pretty face is all I hear," she concludes.

Loki purses his lips. He talked about Thor for ten minutes straight. He hopes that is not all that he managed to convey.

"His hammer," he begins, but Hela cuts him off again.

"A toy," she says, and huffs. "Nothing can stop me. No one can stop me, and least of all Odin's darling boy."

Ah, arrogance. She would do well not to underestimate Thor. Who does she think she is, with her dark little blades? Few can best his brother. She'll find out soon enough. Loki's growing irritation has a fierce edge to it, but he forces himself to keep the same calm smile.

"Any obvious weaknesses?” she asks, like an afterthought.

What is Loki to do? Should he tell her that Thor favors his right, that he goes for the neck too fast, that he fares poorly against magic? That he is easily distracted when angered? Loki has learned all of that after years of fighting with him. Of fighting _against_ him. Pah. Let her figure that out herself, if she can. Maybe they'll kill each other in battle and let him be.

"Me," he says, simply. "He loves me too much, and I not him."

"Sentiment," Hela says, raising an eyebrow.

"Absurd," he concurs. "He should be here soon enough. I was preparing for his return any day now."

"Enough of this," she says, waving her hand in dismissal again. "Gather my armies. I need to inspect them."

He laughs in her face. "I'm your brother, not your lackey. Find someone else to run your errands."

He finds himself flying towards her, her pull irresistible, and she grabs him by the neck. He feels his invisible armor cracking, slipping away, leaving him exposed. Too shocked, he only manages a yelp before she squeezes him harder. Thor isn't the only one to go straight for the neck, it seems.

"You will do as I say," she growls, her face too close to his.

Her eyes. Her eyes are unguarded against magic.

He bares his teeth at her. Loki reaches forward and sinks his fingers into her eyes, drawing dark blood as his dark nails scratch her eyelids with the most vicious magic he can conjure. She yelps and doesn't quite let go, but the surprise and, he hopes, the pain make her loosen her grip around his neck. It's enough for him to slip away from her. He reappears at what he hopes is a safe distance, holding his neck and heaving. He throws a magic rope at her out of spite, meaning to trap her, but it does not stick to her. This is going to be very difficult.

"You fight without honor," Hela says with unexpected calm as she wipes the blood from her face. Why is it black? What is she? The dark streaks on her cheeks make it look as if she were crying. She throws a blade in his direction, but half-heartedly. It misses him.

"What does that matter? It keeps me alive." He glares at her. "I suppose you fancy that was an honorable move, trying to strangle me?"

She seems to consider this, and then stands. "Suit yourself, little Jotun sorcerer. I am going to inspect my armies. Join me, if you are so inclined."

"I will not be ordered around."

"That remains to be seen," she tells him, and flashes him a cruel smile. "I know you haven't knelt."

Loki gives her a wide berth out of the throne room, rolls his eyes, and follows her with a sigh.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things start going a little awry in Asgard...!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up: there's a super brief discussion of incest in this chapter, but it's quickly brushed aside as a joke. I didn't think it merited an archive tag, since this will remain Gen between the "murder siblings", like one commenter called them :D
> 
> [ Here's](http://mushstone.tumblr.com/post/167410255609/thor-3-ragnarok-hela-and-loki-i-want-to-see-if) one of my favorite fanarts of them!

 

* * *

 

The moment he steps outside in her wake is the first time in two years that Loki wonders if he hasn't, by any chance, made an enormous mistake. Before him, Asgard stands destroyed, the buildings in ruins, the gardens torn to the ground – the city a complete wreck. And the bodies. Bodies littering the streets, the square, the long bridge, bloodied and broken. All of the statues of Odin have been pulverized. (And not just Odin's: Loki's too has been reduced to mere stones, to his immense chagrin.) The silence is eerie. Wrong. He cannot even hear birds, only a pitiful breeze.

"What did you do!" Loki exclaims, a hint of panic slipping past his composure. "Did you kill everyone?"

"Everyone who was in my way, yes."

Mostly soldiers, apparently, though Loki can recognize the corpses of civilians in the main square. And his father thought _he_ was bad! Loki would smirk if he weren't so aghast.

"Is there... anyone left?"

"Most of them, I believe. They ran for the hills. I did not trouble myself about them any further."

The mountains, where Heimdall is hiding with a handful of followers who did not love Loki's impression of Odin. They'll be safe there, Loki reasons, and then shakes his head. It is unlike him to worry about his people. Isn't it?

"Brilliant," he mutters. "Just brilliant."

"Is there a problem?" she asks.

He moves closer to her and finds she stands nearly as tall as he. He also realizes he is wearing his Loki form, not Odin's, but the streets before them are so deserted it will likely make no difference.

"Of course there is a problem, Your Most Maleficent Majesty," he tells her, not masking his contempt. "Where is your army? Where are your people? You've started with the wrong foot. Do you imagine your people will be keen to love you after you have slaughtered them?"

It strikes him, after he's said that, that his father is not the only hypocrite in the family. _It's different_ , he tells himself. Asgardians and Midgardians could not be more dissimilar.

"I do not need their love," Hela says. "Only their arms."

"You will not have their arms without their love."

"I am their Queen!" Though furious, Hela also sounds genuinely confused. "If I call to arms, they must answer."

Loki scoffs at her. "When you were last around, perhaps. You will find that things are much changed around here."

"Another of my father's shortcomings, then. As the Queen, I will restore Asgard to its former glory and to its former ways."

"Good luck with that. In the meantime, you would do well to listen to me. Thank you for undoing my hard work of months, by the way. I had the throne and the realm ripe for the taking and you demolished it all like an overgrown bilgesnipe trying to navigate through a glassmaker workshop."

She lunges herself forward, but he is prepared this time and pulls out daggers of his own. Catching her off-guard and pressing them against her neck is glorious – for a fleeting moment, that is. Her first blow knocks him off his feet and has him flying in the air for what seems a very, very long moment. Loki has just the time to realize the landing will hurt before he cushions his fall, too hastily to be of any help. He groans. Hela jumps closer with an acrobatic flourish that makes Loki's scrambling upright the more ridiculous. Her horns are out again. He lashes out at her, but the hit does not reach her. She strikes him square on the mouth and then he finds himself thrown on the ground, on his back, her blows hammering on his body so thoroughly it would put the Hulk to shame. No blades, though. Interesting.

"Stop, stop," he pleads, spitting blood.

"Why should I?" She puts one foot on his chest and he thinks, idly, that she is wearing a very fine boot indeed.

"You need me. I will use the old man's form and acknowledge you. I'll hand over the realm to you. Legitimize you. Sing your praises and make you respected. Make you loved."

He wonders, for a long, despairing minute, if he's miscalculated. She does not care for any of those things, does she. But something softens in her gaze, and she removes her foot from his chest. Her hair returns to normal, and Loki lets out a shaky breath.

"That's what you would want, isn't it? To be loved. To be adored," she says.

"Absolutely not," Loki protests, though too weakly to be convincing.

"Liar," she says, and though her grin is still predatory there is a sad edge to it. "I also wanted to be loved, long ago. But it was taken from me."

Loki wants to shout that she cannot possibly understand, that whatever Odin did to her can never compare to what he's had to endure because of his father's duplicity. But holding his tongue seems a better strategy, considering he's still bleeding from the mouth and she is perfectly unscathed.

"Very well, I'm inclined to consider this your kneeling," Hela says, when she sees he isn't fighting or arguing anymore. He glares at her. "We'll play your way. But if you deviate from the plan I will tear you to pieces."

"I know that," he grumbles, and sits up with a wince. There's no way she didn't break at least one of his ribs. He takes in the ruin of the city around them in one despondent glance. It will be difficult to undo her stupidity. Far more difficult than he let on. "I can't believe you tore down my statue."

"Was that supposed to be you?" She laughs, and Loki hates her. "We'll make you a new one, after mine is wrought."

 

* * *

 

Some people do come back. Most, maybe. How can they not, when not-Odin himself comes look for them in the hills? But not all. Heimdall must be hiding somewhere deeper in the mountains. Loki catches himself looking in that direction increasingly often.

Maintaining his father's shape is a bit of a challenge, in his frail and sickened state. (Loki has to admit it is a little worrying, because the real Odin seems to be in terrible pain but has not yet died. But he also thinks this agony serves rather him well.) The illness makes for good pathos, at least. Loki delivers a moving speech. He shows them the old frescoes, debris and all, and extols his sister's - and Asgard's - past.

"This is my own daughter," he says, "and she's freed her brother from the grips of Death."

He could not resist, of course, exploiting a loophole to explain the reappearance of Loki. He projects his own self in the throne room, ashen and beaten down, fittingly so for someone who has been to Hel and back.

"I am old," he says, voice trembling, "and I have made mistakes. But I do love my children, and I know they will lead our people well."

Out of the corner of Odin's good eye, he can see Hela is entranced by his performance. Loki would make a good father, he thinks. A better one than Odin ever was. His high spirits are short-lived, however. He hears the whispers. _Where is Thor_ , people wonder as they crowd the throne room to see them better. It does look suspiciously like a coup, doesn't it. Loki and Hela and a weakened Odin, and no sign of Thor. The Asgardians might be persuaded to overlook Hela's initial rampage as an unfortunate display of eccentricity, but they will not overlook Thor's absence. Where _is_ Thor? If he dreaded his brother's return before, Loki is beginning to long for it.

"You almost had me fooled there," Hela tells him later that evening, as she joins him out in the terrace.

"I'll take that as a compliment," he says with a sigh.

The 'almost' grates on him. How is magic so ineffective against her? Loki wonders if Thor's battle power would fare better against her. Then again, of course it would. Thor does everything better than Loki. Hela does not refuse the mead he pours for her – so much for only drinking the blood of her enemies. How much of what he's seen of her is posturing, and how much is her true self? Loki waves his hand over her drink; if not to poison her outright, to hopefully make her sleep and give him some breathing room to plan what to do next.

"The horn thing. With your hair. I like it," he says, trying to keep his tone casual as he hands her the cup. "You've got to teach me how to do that."

"I think not. A girl needs to have her secrets."

"Who taught you magic?" he asks, pushing his luck.

"I taught myself," Hela says. "Back in the day, any worthy warrior was supposed to know how to at least defend themselves against spells. Many knew how to cast them too."

She stares down at her drink and throws it in Loki's face. He gasps, and has to shut his mouth not to swallow any of it himself – curse her! He spits out quickly. His own magic wouldn't work against him. Would it?

"Still trying to cause mischief with your childish tricks? It won't work on me," she says, and her smirk is infuriating. "Don't look so chagrined. You're still very good."

"Hm. I see my flattery is rubbing off on you," he says, dryly.

She laughs, she actually laughs _with_ him. It's more terrifying than anything he's seen from her this far. Loki takes several steps back, expecting to be slaughtered, but nothing happens. Her amused smile follows him as he returns to the serving table. He raises his hands as if saying no more tricks, and pours more mead but only for himself. She takes his cue and serves herself one cup.

Loki meant to stand in the terrace to survey the land, but his eye catches the long caravan of those who are fleeing the city (fleeing _Hela_ ): their torches light a long serpent of fire along the hills. He does not want her to see that. Those two years he's been on the throne have softened him to the people of Asgard. Either that, or in the face of her madness his own insanity takes on a compassionate edge. He's becoming more and more ridiculous by the minute.

He retires to the antechamber, hoping to distract her from their people's disloyalty. Hela follows after him, cup in hand, and sits herself across him in one of the lounging chairs – his own new additions to Odin's palace. Loki strikes up a small fire between them, both because he can and also to hinder her in case her mood shifts abruptly.       

"Cozy," she says, an eyebrow raised, and takes a sip.

"You're welcome."

She is watching him, he knows, but he flees her gaze. It's... certainly _something_ , to be on the receiving edge of a murderous sibling. For all his outrage, Thor never tried to kill him in earnest. Loki doesn't doubt for one moment that Hela would, and yet she could have, earlier, but she only gave him a trashing. She is still looking at him when he glances up to meet her gaze.

"Say," she tells him. "I've been meaning to ask. Why Midgard? When you tried to take over a realm. Why not Jotunheim?"

_Because of the Tesseract_ , Loki answers at once in his head. Because it was his only way out of Thanos' grasp, and however improbable it seemed at the time, he took his chances. It worked. But he'll never speak of that, and least of all to Hela. Yet Jotunheim _has_ crossed his mind more than once. He could take the Casket with him any time he wanted, proclaim himself King, and rule over them. The prospect always makes him want to vomit.

"Because Thor loves Midgard and I've been known to wreck his toys," he forces himself to say, though he is not entirely lying. "And I hate Jotunheim. What could I possibly want in that forsaken ice rock full of brutes? There's nothing there for me. I tried to destroy it, once. I wish I had."

"We still can," Hela says. "We could start there."

"I would like that," he says, earnest, but still a little suspicious of her sudden kindness.

They aren't all that different, are they. The three of them. They were all cursed with their father's ambition – with his violence. It was never a flaw. Come to think about it, Odin was lenient with Loki, to only cage him in Asgard. Pity for his youngest? Unlikely, though maybe Frigga's pleas (or spells?) did a number on him. Yet he could have banished Loki, like he did Hela and later Thor. Odin could have thrown him to Jotunheim, defenseless and dwarfish, and left him there to fend for himself or to die. Maybe the old man _is_ fond of Loki, after all.

"What was it like, when he cast you away?" he asks.

He spoke cautiously, in case this subject brings back her rage. He can half imagine it, if Thor's banishment was anything like hers. Back then, Odin must have been horrified to find Thor was more like Hela than he'd hoped. His sister stares at the fire between them and her eyes become vacant.

"I challenged him," she says, speaking slowly. "And we fought. I was winning. But then he struck me. I was not expecting that. I should have, maybe. But it shocked me enough for him to hurl me away from Asgard."

It shocks Loki, too. Odin never raised a hand on either of them, not even on Loki for all his mischief. Hela's fist tightens on her cup until it breaks. The glass shards fall on the floor of the antechamber, her dark blood mixing with the mead.

"He buried me so deep in Hel it took me centuries to recover. When I tried to escape, he sent the Valkyries after me. I killed them all, one by one. So he came himself. I was prepared this time, but he'd grown stronger, and I was away from Asgard. He defeated me again." Hela meets Loki's gaze, and Death flashes deep in her eyes. "He will not defeat me a third time."

Even if Odin does manage to defeat her a third time, Loki thinks, he may not deserve to stay alive. But she _can_ be defeated, in any case. He files away that information, and smiles at her.

 

* * *

 

"Let's put an end to his torment, shall we?" Hela tells him, as they make their way to the Bifrost chambers, down the long, multicolored bridge. As agreed, he'll take her to the real Odin in Midgard, and watch him get his comeuppance.

"In his state, it will be almost a kindness," Loki teases. "How very unlike you."

"I assure you, the notion is odious to me. But I've wasted enough time with your puppetry. Your little political display was of no use to me."

She's right, of course. The city is fast depleting. Few want to stay for Hela's reign despite the blessing of not-Odin. A tenth of the population, perhaps even less.

"Your usefulness is running thin, little brother," Hela adds, almost genially.

Of course she wouldn't think him useful.

An old woman came to see him the day after Hela's proclamation, complaining about the deaths of her sons and daughters at the hands of the new queen. They'd been helping her in her workshop and now she had no one, she said. Hela would have killed her on the spot for her insolence, undoubtedly, but Loki was quick to arrange a retribution for her. His sister didn't show any particular interest in finances, but he was aware enough of the healthy state of the treasury to grant the woman some money, and meticulous enough to write it down in the Books – with invisible ink, in case Hela felt strongly against it later. Word spread that he was generous, and more people came to see him later that day with similar requests. Benevolent Prince Loki! The world is upside down, and he doesn't know whether to laugh about it or to tear his hair out.

"You'll find I'm very resourceful," he tells her with a smirk, unwilling to show an inkling of the fear growing inside him at the overt threat in her gaze.

"I noticed that," she says, and her tone has a disquieting edge to it. "But don't think you're off the hook because we had a little heart to heart."

"I'm not off the hook?" He scoffs. "Hmm. Well, how about your consort?" Loki offers, more in jest than in earnest - he is dangerously approaching his wit's end.

"My consort! How scandalous, even for us."

"Isn't it?" Loki eggs on, because she sounds amused, and he'll take amused before murderous. "What better way to drag Odin's name through the mud?"

She stops, then, and glances at him, up and down, appraising him. She laughs.

"You would not do. It would be as if I were bedding myself."

"Is it only my shape that bothers you?" he counters, and shifts into his Jotun form, red-eyed and frozen, briefly enough to grin at her. She starts at it. Even monsters fear other monsters, apparently. "See? Resourceful."

"I don't have time for your games," she says, returning to her cruel, homicidal self in the blink of an eye, and glaring at him most murderously before resuming her walk. Taken aback, Loki can do little else than to follow her to the Bifrost room, half offended and half relieved that she refused him.

Loki expected to find bodies here too - his brother's friends, that he assigned to man the chambers after he banished Heimdall. But the room is undisturbed, clean, in order, as if no one had set foot in there for days.

"How did you get here in the first place?" he asks her.

He assumed she'd somehow found her way to Asgard through the Bifrost, but the lack of a carnage here suggests otherwise. A portal, perhaps, one unknown to him. Alarming. Very alarming.

"Where is the sword?" she demands, ignoring his question, and only then does Loki notice that Hofund does not rest where it should.

"Someone must have stolen it," he says, keeping his voice calm and neutral, with no hints of levity. That someone must be Heimdall. No one else would dare to do this.

"Stolen it!" she roars. "Find them! Kill them! I need that sword. It's the key to the Bifrost!"

Loki considers saying three things. One, that Heimdall and his supporters are very certainly hiding in one of the old strongholds in the mountains, and it's just a matter of finding out which one. Two, that he is still not her lackey, and that he will not take orders from her. And three, that Hofund is not required to open the Bifrost, that it may be opened with Odin's scepter, if the will is there, and that's he's done it once before.

Instead, he stays conspicuously silent.

  


 

* * *

 

"They will not do. This is not a suitable army," Hela says, and glares at Loki as if this were a personal affront of his own doing. Before them, the few Asgardians loyal to her stand at attention. She's right. They are too few. "Those rebels who dare oppose me - I will exterminate them, one by one."

She will never stop, will she? She will never be satisfied until everyone, down to the last man, is crushed under her feet, and then she will turn her gaze upon those who remain, and the Nine Realms, and the Universe. He follows her back into the Palace with the distinct feeling that what started as an insignificant act of malice from him is now spinning out of his control. Out of his hands.

"Want to see what true power looks like?" she says, dreadsome yet playful, as she makes her way down to the treasure vault.

"I _have_ seen true power," he bites back, and the mere recollection of _it_ cuts deep somewhere inside him, somewhere he's buried, locked away, and forgotten. Perhaps he and his father are more alike than he admits.

Hela is strangely light-hearted as she makes her way past the treasures and disparages them as fake, ostentatious, or useless. Loki almost likes her. If his distaste for this room ran a little shallower, he might join in and joke with her. In another world, perhaps, a fairer world where their father had let them grow up together, and the Casket in the vault was not a gruesome reminder of what he truly is and where he truly belongs.

"That's interesting," she says, as she walks by the Stone.

_You have no idea_ , Loki thinks, and he averts his gaze. And she really has no idea, does she? How long was she imprisoned? What tidings of the outer world did she have, if any? Odin had not even seen fit to send word to him about his mother's death until it was long past, and they were living in the same palace. Unknowingly ignorant of the higher stakes at play in Yggdrasil, Hela is operating under a set of values and of assumptions that are vastly outdated. It will either lead to her undoing, or her victory.

He watches, mesmerized, as she grabs the Eternal Flame with her bare hands, and smashes the vault floor with a tall axe as effortlessly as if it were made out of paper. It's not quite magic, Loki thinks as he follows her down the hole she has opened – he does need to cast a spell to slow down his fall, but she just _lands_ , as gracefully as when she last fought him. It's as if she's able to manipulate her surroundings somehow, bending them to her will.

This funerary chamber is yet another of Odin's secrets that he tried to bury. But who built this? Judging by the craftsmanship, hundreds of workers must have wrought this tomb – how is it possible that not one of them remembered Hela? Did his father cast a spell upon all of Asgard? Rows upon rows of soldiers rest down here, rotten, full of dust and cobwebs. Forgotten. Hela's companions. Odin must have thought it generous of him not to have a grave for his daughter here.

Loki witnesses the rebirth of her undead army, and his heart knows only dread.

He was not aware the Eternal Flame could do _that_. Nothing should be able to do _that_. He thinks of his mother – no, no, it's too horrid. It mustn't be. But Hela is too powerful, and Loki cannot hope to ever defeat her, or even unseat her. He needs... Damned it all, he likely needs his father. Or Thor, at the very least.

"What's the matter, little brother?" she asks, walking up to him with her monstrous wolf nuzzling her shoulder. "You've been uncharacteristically quiet. Afraid of the big bad wolf?"

"I just hope your pet is house-trained," he quips with his most charming smile, but _run, run, run_ is all that echoes through his mind.

 

* * *

 

"My King, please! Let me examine you. It may not be too late yet," Eir pleads, at the door of Odin's bedchambers.

Inside the room, Loki stares down at his own hands, and makes no move to answer. He is trying to undo the spell that binds his father to Midgard, but it requires too great an effort in his uneasy state of mind. _Wake up, father_ , he sends across the stars, _I release you, wake up, I beg of you_. But he senses no immediate improvement in his father's health. Odin has entered a deep stasis, it seems, and the illness eats him away. If he breaks the spell fully, Loki might be unable to reach him at will later. It is also likely that Odin has survived this long because of their tenuous link, sapping some of Loki's life energy to sustain himself. But what else is Loki to do? This may be his only chance to undo all that he has unleashed. He doesn't think Odin is strong enough to beat Hela, and Loki isn't certain that he wants him to. But he cannot do it himself. Desperate, Loki severs the spell, and hides his face in his hands. _Father, wake up_ , he pleads one last time, before rising and pushing the door ajar.

Eir slips in the room and stares at him in confusion.

"Where is Odin?" she asks, immediately suspicious. She's brought all the nursing supplies with her in a little satchel. She sets them down by the washbasin next to Odin's bed.

"I sent him to Midgard," Loki half-lies. "He will be safer there. Safer from _her_. Eir, please. You must help me. Do you know where Heimdall hides?"

She frowns in distrust and purses her lips. "I don't know."

Loki recognizes the lie when he hears it, of course. She does know, but she will never tell him. She must think Hela and Loki are enemies of Asgard. And they are, in a way, aren't they. Or have been so far. Loki is supposed to be gathering those who have remained, so she can execute them all until they reveal Heimdall's whereabouts. He did not obey her, but he also did not refuse.

"I ask only for myself, not for my sister," he insists, but Eir remains unmoved.

Why would she believe him? Why would anyone believe him? He considers reaching into her mind and extracting the information by force, but Eir raises her palm to stop him.

"What would Frigga say, if she saw you? She'd be ashamed of you," she scolds.

"Would she? She asked Odin to spare me. I think she knew it would come to this, sooner or later – Asgard's ruin, because of my father's lies!" He didn't mean to act menacing, but when Eir cowers from him he realizes he has no control over his fury when it comes to Odin. He takes a deep breath and tries to will his voice to a calmer tone. "My sister must be stopped. But I need a little help. I just need to see Heimdall. _Please_."

Eir hesitates, but the door of the room bursts open, startling them both.

"Well, well, well," Hela says, as she steps inside. "My younger brother conspiring against me. How utterly disgusting."

Loki takes a step back. His first instinct is to vanish, but the old man always did say to be prepared for war. He stands his ground, arms extended, ready to defend himself.

"Oh dear," he says, mocking her in spite of his dread. "And I thought we were getting on so well."

"So did I. Until you betrayed me!"

"It's nothing personal, really. I betray everyone," he says, and glances at Eir. "Get out," he tells her, intending to spare her, but that is precisely her undoing.

Now having noticed the nurse, Hela flashes him a cruel grin and thrusts her sword straight into Eir's chest. The warm blood sprays on Loki's legs as she collapses before him. Her death irritates him more than he expected. She was his mother's friend, and she was only trying to help.

"You're next," Hela teases, and Loki's mouth goes dry.

"Am I?" he still manages to say, and disappears.

Or tries to.

Hela is swift to grab him by the arm, and she does not let go. Loki screams as she breaks his arm, the pain shattering his concentration and making him visible again. She punches his left cheek and forces him to his knees with the blow. He kicks her, but her long fingers curl on his locks, nails digging deep into his scalp as she forces him backwards, exposing his neck. The cold metallic sound of her dark sword makes Loki flinch.

So he does it.

The washbasin: desperate, Loki reaches for it blindly with his good hand. Icy shards fly out and cut through Hela like daggers – aiming for her eyes. He hates it, the dark, humiliating rage of having to use _that_ magic nearly suffocating him, but it's enough of a distraction. She lets go. This time he does disappear, and he runs, and he does not look back.

  



	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed the place of Odin's last conversation a little - there are nicer spots in Norway like [this one](https://www.visitnorway.com/listings/the-unesco-n%C3%A6r%C3%B8yfjord/12020/).

 

* * *

 

Loki doesn't have to run very far.

"Heimdall," he calls, on his frantic way up the hills, and casts off the spell that keeps him invisible. "Heimdall!"

The ascent is laborious, more so with the broken arm that he is mending on the run. He trips and missteps and wastes an appalling amount of time trying to stay off the obvious paths. There will be no hiding from Hela's wolf, he knows, but he can at least get a head start. Yet as he reaches a clearing in the forest, a hooded man steps from behind a tree, Hofund fastened across his back.

"Heimdall!" Loki shouts, and falls to his knees. "Help!"

"Your senseless mischief has brought this upon us all," Heimdall scolds.

"Not just mine!" Loki glares up at him. "Did you know? Did you know about her?"

"I did," Heimdall says, and sighs. For a brief, unsettling moment, he covers his all-seeing eyes with his hand. "I was there when she was born. I was also there when she was exiled."

"And my mother? Did she know?" Loki asks, and when Heimdall stays silent, he lashes out at him. "Why does my father do nothing but lie! What else has he hidden! What else should I know?"

"That is a conversation for another time, perhaps," Heimdall says calmly, unmoved by his outburst. "Hela must be stopped now, whatever the cost. She draws her power from Asgard. The longer she feeds on it, the harder it will be to contain her."

"I don't know where Odin is now. And where is Thor? Has she killed him? Is that why he does not come?"

Heimdall sighs once more, and appears lost in thought as he scans the Universe with his golden gaze.

"Alas, Odin is hidden from me, but your brother lives," he declares, and Loki breathes again, just a little. "But she very nearly did kill him. They met in Muspelheim, where she defeated Surtur. She took no notice of Thor. I do not think she understood who he is. She left him for dead, and he has been trying to find his way back."

"So she came through a portal, didn't she? One I haven't found. I did not know there was a way to Muspelheim. Can Thor not use it as well?"

"Your brother has little talent to find portals. He has been trying to find one for days and, failing that, pleading for me to bring him back. You must go to him. Bring him back at once."

Loki straightens. He can do that. He will find his sister's portal, bring his brother back, and end this nightmare once and for all.

"Right," he says. "I will find the portal."

"Unfortunately, that portal has a singularity," Heimdall warns. "It may only be used in one direction. You must find another way to Thor."

Loki curses and looks over his shoulder, at the broken city that extends far beyond his sight. The Bifrost bridge seems unguarded, but it may well be a trap. He hesitates.

"You will bring us back? When it's time?"

Heimdall shakes his head. "I cannot promise you that. I have sworn to protect these people, and I may not be able to make my way to the Bifrost in time. There is an instrument in your father's treasure vault that you could use. That would be the safest way."

"The safest way!" Loki's heart lurches in horror, the blue horror that never leaves his mind. "It would be pure folly! You cannot possibly comprehend what the stakes would be if I were to take that... _thing_ out of Asgard."

_No realm, no barren moon, no crevice where he can't find you_ , the horrid grating voice reminds him. Loki curls his fists. He cannot do it. He cannot possibly use the Tesseract and live to tell the tale.

"Nevertheless, that is your only way to Thor, and Asgard's only hope. Go forth, Odinson. You may yet undo the mischief that started this all."

 

 

* * *

 

Finding the courage to return to the Palace and evading Hela's wolf on the long way down to the vault are nothing compared to the monstrous dread of taking the Stone and knowing that, somewhere, an intangible hourglass has been turned, and that Loki's time is spilling away to an inevitable end.

 

 

* * *

 

Thor is, almost predictably, both elated and furious to see him.

"Loki!" he shouts, his grin enormous, and then his voice drops into a growl. "What did you do?"

The Tesseract dropped Loki rather unceremoniously on Muspelheim, just in front of Thor. Off-balance, he lands on all fours and considers hiding the Stone from him, but it matters so little in the grand scheme of things that he rather lets the cube roll out of his grasp. He watches it stop by Thor's feet.

"I'm sorry," Loki says, and for once he does mean it.

"Why do you have this? What have you done! I thought you died."

Loki raises his hands to appease him, and wonders why Heimdall thought he was the best person to reason with Thor. His brother looks like he's just about to strangle him.

"A sister. We have a sister," Loki says, scuttling away from him. "For once I'm not the sibling you should be wary of."

"What are you talking about?" Thor demands, thumping as he follows him. He is bloodied all over, and a large burn covers his neck. It caught some of his golden hair, too. Hela's work, no doubt. It's unbearably warm in this planet.

"It looks like I'm perpetually cursed to have no place in the family Odin tried to build. For years we thought I was the mad one, but just my luck! An even madder one shows up to displace me." Loki lets out a wry chuckle, and notices Thor's patience is wearing thin. "You saw her, I believe. Heimdall said she defeated Surtur."

Thor starts at this. "I saw something," he admits. "A horned creature. She didn't speak. She only killed him. Nearly fried me in the process, laughed, and then disappeared."

"Yes, that does sound like her. Promise you won't strangle me."

He tells him everything. Odin. Hela. All that she has told him about their father. All that she has done to Asgard. Her undead army. Eir. Heimdall. Thor's face falls, and falls some more, and by the end of the tale he looks so crestfallen Loki thinks he can see tears in his eyes.

"That's the worst story I've ever heard," Thor says, his fist tight around his hammer. "Is that truly the best lie you could come up with?"

"It's not a lie."

"You've lied to me before!" Thor insists. He's grown wiser, to distrust Loki like this. "How can I know it's not a trick?"

"I give you my word, worthless as it may be, but I give it nonetheless." Thor is still glaring at him, and Loki begins to fear for his life. "Come to Asgard, see for yourself. She'll kill everyone. She's already begun!"

"That's exactly the kind of thing you'd say to me to trick me!"

When Loki was very young, his mother told him a story about a boy who lied to the other villagers about a monstrous wolf. When the true wolf came, no one believed him. Frigga wasn't scolding him, that time, though Loki cried about it the rest of the evening – she was trying to _warn_ him. The irony isn't lost on him that his sister has the very kind of pet that story was about. He lets out a sad chuckle. Thor lifts his hammer to strike him. Loki wonders if it will hurt, when it shatters his head.

"Please," he pleads, and he lifts his arms to protect himself. This seems to soften Thor's wrath, somehow. "You can punch me all you want later, in Asgard, just come back with me."

"I thought you were dead!" Thor shouts, though his voice isn't as thunderous. He lowers his hammer. "I mourned you! I cried for you."

"I'm... honored," Loki says, moved in spite of himself, and wishes Thor focused on the immediate threat to Asgard and not on Loki's never-ending unworth.

"So when father let me go... that time, after the Convergence? That was you?"

"That was me," he admits, and Thor's face goes red. "You should have known better. The real Odin would have never allowed you to leave."

"You're wrong."

"Am I?"

Thor falls silent. He crouches down to be at eye level. Loki stays very still, unsure whether he's about to be struck. He'd deserve it. Yet his brother only puts a hand over his knee.

"Where is father now?"

"Midgard," Loki guesses. His heart aches. "I hope," he adds, barely a whisper.

Thor picks up the Tesseract and hands it to Loki. "Then takes us there."

"To Midgard? There is no time! We have to go back to Asgard. We have to stop her!"

"I want to see my father," Thor insists, unmovable. "If this isn't a trick of yours, he's the only one who can stop this madness."

"I'm not sure that he can. I think he cast her away because he could no longer stop her."

"Well, let's find out."

Loki sighs and closes his eyes. Odin's power is still perceptible in Yggdrasil, a faint breeze shaking the leaves of the metaphorical tree with his distinct imprint. Loki zeroes on this smell, uncovering the invisible threads that connect the worlds to reveal his presence. He takes the Tesseract, turning it gingerly between his fingers before letting it channel its power through him. He thinks of his father, and of Midgard, and does not tell Thor that every time he uses the Stone so openly he is but one step closer to disaster, broadcasting his (and _its_ ) whereabouts to all those who are listening. And they are listening. Thor clings to him as they are transported out of Muspelheim, arms wrapped tight around him and his face against his shoulder. Loki holds him closer. It's nice.

 

* * *

 

When Loki opens his eyes, he recognizes Norge - the land that looks the most like Asgard. It's unsurprising that Odin chose to take refuge here, in the largest, mistiest, fairest fjord of this water-planet. The Allfather stands atop the tallest mountain, overlooking the lands. He's alive. Loki lets out a shaky breath. Beneath him, Thor groans: he landed first, and cushioned their fall into Midgard with his back. Loki rolls off from him to sit on the damp, green grass.

"Father!" Thor shouts, and jumps to his feet to run to him.

Loki's first impulse is to run too, to join them at the top of the mountain, but caution demands he slow down, uncertain of the reception he might get from his father. But what is the worst that Odin can do to him? Imprison him? Throw him down an abyss? Short of locking him away in a forgotten universe, like he did to Hela, he's done all of that. And executing him might be a kindness, now, to escape Loki's doom rapidly approaching. But Odin stands unthreatening, lost in thought, and makes no move towards Loki as he steps closer to him.

"Father, it's us," Thor insists.

"My sons," Odin says at last. Loki flinches. Who knew guilt could make one's throat so tight? "I've been waiting for you."

"It's time to come home," Thor says, very gently, but Odin appears not to hear him.

"That was a very good spell you trapped me in," he says with a chuckle as he turns towards Loki. "Frigga would have been proud." He cannot meet his father's gaze, not when he is looking at him with unexpected fondness, as if it were all in good fun, a childish mischief to be dismissed. "I suppose I deserved it," Odin adds, sounding wistful.

"No," Loki whispers, too ashamed to defend himself.

"I've failed you. I've failed all of my children. I see it now. But it's too late for us."

"It isn't too late!" Thor says, putting a hand on their father's shoulder. "It's never too late. Whatever this is, we will face it together."

"I'm on a different path now," Odin says, and sighs. "One of my own doing. You must face her alone, but I fear she cannot be stopped. Soon her wrath will rain upon the Nine Realms, and she will reclaim what I renounced. She will bring back death and ruin, like I once did when the worlds were still young. This is a cycle that cannot be broken."

"So it's true? There is another?" Thor asks, bewilderment and hurt plain in his voice. "I'm not your firstborn?"

"You are my first son," Odin says softly. "And you are my firstborn in the new era I sought for our worlds, an era of peace, free of senseless violence."

"Free of senseless violence!" Loki says, his voice shaky, trembling with anger. "In your new era of peace, you condemned the Jotnar to a long agony and stole their infant Prince!"

"I did," Odin admits. "I see now that violence cannot ever be stopped."

"Father, that is not true," Thor protests, but Loki cuts him off.

"You know, I spent years thinking I was a monster," he tells his father. "Now that I've met my sister, I think _you_ were the monster all along."

"Perhaps I was." Odin closes his good eye. "I wish I could spare you the consequences of my past follies."

"Why didn't you tell us about her?" Loki asks, the old, festering fury spurring him on. Thor tries to shush him, but now that he's found his voice it seems he cannot stop firing questions. "Why did you throw her away after you broke her yourself? Did you ever love her? Were we all so unworthy?"

It isn't for his sister he speaks. Unbidden tears sting in his eyes.

"I love all of my children," Odin says. "My two sons, and my wayward daughter. I must depart now. Remember this place, when all has ended. Tell your sister I regret it."

Atop the tallest mountain of Norge, a gust of wind blows away the golden fireflies that Odin dissolves into.

"This is all your doing!" Thor says, his voice thick with tears. "This was your fault!"

Loki expects Thor to shove him, to strike him, to strangle him, but after the first step forward his brother stays dead in his tracks, staring at him with his mouth hanging open. In horror. In pity. Loki looks down. His hands are beginning to turning blue. _No_! No, no, no. So it _was_ Odin's glamour, after all. Nauseated, Loki wills himself to stay in his Aesir shape, though the energy to do so is greater than he is used to. Must he spend the rest of his days like this (however short they might be), and have no place in Asgard, and die a Jotun death? Must his father's last laugh be so cruel?

Yet one of Odin's stray fireflies flutters near him, lagging behind the others, and it fuses into Loki's forehead with a flash of gold. His skin returns to its rosy Aesir tint. He chokes back a sob.

Next to him, Thor starts crying too.

 

* * *

 

"What now?" Thor asks, an eternity later, when all their tears are spent.

"I don't think we have a choice," Loki says.

He stares up at the clouds swirling close to the top of the mountain. The damp grass against his back, the murmur of the fjord down below, and the chilly wind on his face do bring a semblance of comfort. There is a boat sailing down there, and it blows a cheery horn, oblivious to what has just transpired atop the mountain. He can see why his brother likes this planet. In a way, Loki does have a choice: he can lie here in Midgard with the Stone, do nothing, and await his fate, or he can go back to Asgard, and die at his sister's hands. Somehow he fancies the second option will be less painful. Just marginally so.

"I promised Heimdall I'd bring you back," he adds. "Your people need you."

"Our people," Thor corrects. He is sitting next to him on the grass. He leans closer, and his bright blue eyes seem to be searching for something in Loki's gaze.

"Our people," he concedes. "But they do not need me."

" _I_ need you," Thor says. "I don't care what you are, or how you look. I've never cared. You're my brother."

Is it true? Would Thor say the same if Odin hadn't granted him one last kindness – if Loki were to remain in his _other_ form permanently? Gratitude is the last thing he wants to feel for his father, and yet... And yet. He wants to believe Thor. He wants to believe him so much he can't bear to look at him in the eye. But his brother moves even closer, and Loki can't make himself look away.

"I know we've not seen eye to eye for many years," Thor says, and it's quite the understatement, "but I need to know you'll be there for me now. Stand with me. Just this once. Please."

Thor's hand finds his. Loki squeezes it tight.

"I'll be there," he says, and wishes he were better at keeping promises.

 

* * *

 

The Stone is a fickle little thing, and though Loki wills it to transport them somewhere safe in Asgard, it drops them just in front of the Palace. So much for secrecy. He hides the Tesseract in the folds of his cloak, because up in the terrace, Hela stares down at them as they scramble to their feet. She laughs.

"Welcome back, little traitor," she says, murderously.

"She looks like you," Thor says, sounding puzzled. "Why does she look like you?"

"Shut up," Loki tells him. "Sister," he calls out, flashing her a pacifying grin. "My Queen. Odin has finally died, and your reign has begun."

"What are you doing?" Thor protests, but Loki shushes him again.

"You're an even bigger idiot than I thought, to come back like this," she tells him. Her horns are out, and she raises an eyebrow.

"Yes, I know, I missed you too. Won't you look at what I brought you? This is your brother Thor," he says, and pushes Thor forward. "He can be a little obnoxious at times, but I promise you he's good fun."

Hela leans over the railing, eyes narrowed. "I've seen you before," she says. "Weren't you that cockroach on Muspelheim?" She jumps down from the terrace and though her landing is graceful, she leaves a little crater where she met the marbled floor. Loki takes several steps back, but Thor stands his ground even as she walks up to him. "Impressive," she says, appraising him. "But insufficient. You are no threat to me. I think this throne has had its fair share of pretenders, wouldn't you agree?"

"I don't want the throne," Thor says. "I want my people. What have you done to them?"

She circles around him as she studies him. Loki realizes, too late, that she has come between them, and that if a fight breaks out - _when_ a fight breaks out - he will not be able to stand next to Thor. He tries to move closer, as furtively as he can without drawing her attention.

"I was of a mind to kill them all until I got my hands on the sword. But that was before I realized my little brother knew how to use a device that will serve me just as well." Loki is jerked forward by her vicious, irresistible pull and he cries out as she closes her deadly grip on him. "Give it to me."

"Get your hands off him," Thor growls.

"Or what? You'll beat me to a pulp with that hammer of yours?"

"You know what? I think I will."

Loki has just the time to regret having told her he is Thor's greatest weakness before his brother throws Mjolnir at her. Hela lets go of Loki and extends her hand towards the projectile. And then the unthinkable happens. She stops the hammer with her bare hands, _holds_ it by the head, curls her fist, and crushes it to a million pieces. Thor gasps. He stands there, dumbfounded, staring down at the shards of his broken weapon. He blinks.

"N-no," he says, wide-eyed, lost. "That's not possible."

"Darling, you have no idea what's possible," she tells him, and laughs. "That plaything once belonged to me, long before you were conceived. Everything you see here once belonged to _me_ , pretender."

She could call him a troll and get no reaction out of Thor, who is still contemplating the loss of his weapon in muted shock. This is no good. Loki knows his brother enough to know he may very well crumble without his hammer.

"Thor!" he shouts, scrambling upright and away from her. "It's just a weapon. A _thing_. It channeled your powers. It did not hold them! Here," he adds, and conjures up an iron axe from the armory.

He hands it to him, but Thor only looks down at it, his grip uncertain, as if not understanding. Loki pushes it against him. He has just the time to raise an invisible shield around them with his other hand to stop Hela's vicious blow. The force of the shock reverberates up his bones, up his elbow, but he still stands by Thor.

"It doesn't matter!" he insists, and manages to at last meet his brother's gaze.

"You would do well not to listen to him." Hela tells Thor, teasing as she nears them. "Such a lying, cunning witch can hardly be trusted. When I'm done with you, I'll tear his tongue out with my bare hands."

Thor seems to snap out of his trance then. He nods at Loki's, briefly, before his eyes turn electric blue. His fingers begin to spark. Loki judiciously takes cover, before thunder breaks out.

 

* * *

 

No one said it would be easy, but no one said it would be this hard, either.

Thor takes on Hela with varying degrees of success, but while they fight each other her undead army comes to her aid, and her monstrous wolf, and the handful of Asgardians now loyal to her. It falls upon Loki to fight them, and they are so many. He can only mend his injuries so quickly, and the blows do not stop. Tired, bloodied, he thinks this is likely as far as he will go, but a great horn sounds, and Heimdall joins in the fight. Loki laughs out loud on the battlefield. Sif, Fandral, Hogun, Volstagg. The very same warriors who once renounced him now stand by him. For him, for Thor, and for Asgard.

But Odin always did warn: the moment you believe yourself victorious is often the most dangerous. Just as Loki starts to think the tides are turning in their favor, an enormous spaceship darkens Asgard's horizon. Elsewhere, somewhere immaterial, Loki's hourglass comes to an abrupt halt.

Thanos has arrived.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, Thanos is such a boring villain to me, sorry if this chapter doesn't dwell on him too much - he just bores me to tears. Hela FTW!!
> 
> I'm struggling a little to edit what would have been chapter 6, as it's grown a little longer than in the first draft. I think I'll have to split it into two. So I'm upping the chapter count from 6 up to 7. Thank you for your comments so far, they really keep me motivated!

 

* * *

 

The great door of the ship yawns open, but instead of hordes of soldiers only a single, massive silhouette emerges from the ship, shortly followed by four smaller ones. Loki wastes no time contemplating his options. There's nowhere to hide, he knows, but he still makes an attempt to run. He manages to find Sif in the ensuing chaos.

"Call off your men!" he tells her. "He will crush you all!"

"There's only five of them!" she protests. "We can handle this."

"You cannot. No one can. Rally your troops! Now!"

"What then? Run? We already ran from Hela because Heimdall ordered it. We let Asgard down that day. We won't run again!"

"There will be no Asgard left if he chooses to attack. This is not a foe for you." Loki notices Heimdall has stopped fighting and is standing nearby, watching them argue. For his benefit, he adds, "He has an Infinity Stone!"

As if on cue, Thanos raises his gloved fist and punches the first line of the Asgardian forces closer to his ship. A dozen good men fly through the air with the strike as if they were sacks of hay. Dead, most likely.

"It's me he's after," Loki whispers. "Let him through."

"Loki is right," Heimdall says with a sigh. "This is not a foe we can fight with our current forces. Rally the soldiers back, Sif."

For a fleeting moment, Loki considers confronting him in front of the Palace where he stands. It would be the honorable thing to do, undoubtedly: face his foe, face his failures, and face his end. But it would also be very foolish. There are powerful enchantments inside the Palace, wrought with magic older than Odin and cast to protect it against any kind of invaders. If Hela and Thor haven't killed each other yet, they could delay the inevitable for a few moments – delay it a little at least until Loki may find a quieter place to concentrate and use the Tesseract.

But once in the throne room, he finds that his brother and sister are no longer locked in battle. Out in the terrace, side by side, they stare down at the threatening vessel but also keep glancing at each other, as if they were unsure whether to continue fighting, or to mind this foreign threat. Thor was on the brink of defeat, it seems: blood is dripping down his cheek after Hela tore one of his eyes out. He looks... not unlike their father. Dreadful, that is. They both turn to look at Loki with the same movement.

"Is this you? Did you do this?" Thor asks him, accusing as ever.

"Yes," Loki whispers, and yet he still cradles the Tesseract, unwilling to let go. Everything is always his fault. "But I did not mean for this to happen."

"You've said that before," Hela says, sounding exasperated. "Do you ever _do_ mean for things to happen?"

If he weren't so worried, Loki would laugh. Down below, he can see Thanos advancing towards the Palace followed by a handful of acolytes. He meets no resistance on his way, his hideous form towering over the soldiers that Sif and Heimdall are holding back.

"What are you?" Hela demands, shouting to be heard. "How dare you land in Asgard uninvited?"

Thanos looks up at the three of them, evidently assessing their worth. His gaze lingers on Loki, terrible, and lust flickers in his eyes as he recognizes him – and the Stone. Loki has to look away. He cannot bear the sight of him without feeling weak in the knees, the hideous memories flashing through his eyes. He'd like to lean on something, but on what? The railing? Thor, perhaps?

"Speak at once, or wave your filthy vessel goodbye," Hela insists. "My bridge is not a landing strip for the galaxy's garbage collectors."

"Lady Death," Thanos says, with marked politeness. "I have heard of you. I am Thanos."

"Never heard of you," she says, glacially disdainful. "Your timing is abysmal. We're in the middle of a little family crisis right now. State your business or be gone."

"That one has something that belongs to me," Thanos says, his evil glare upon Loki again. He's managed to slide behind Thor, but he can still be seen.

"Something that belongs to you!" Hela barks out a short laugh, terrifying in her own deranged way. "Everything you see here before you, every stone, every tree, every weapon or artifact in our vaults belongs to _me_. This amorphous being struts into Asgard and lies claim to the Queen's treasure. Have you heard anything more ridiculous, brother?" she asks, turning towards Thor.

"I don't know," Thor says, a little taken aback to be addressed.

"Listen now, whatever you said you were called." Hela leans down some more over the railing, baring her teeth at him. "This Stone belongs to Asgard. I will not take kindly to your stealing my little brother's toys."

Thanos seems disconcerted with the treatment he's receiving. From his stance, Loki guesses he's trying to decide whether to bargain or to fight. His indecision is short-lived, and he takes a step forward.

"Perhaps My Lady does not realize what power that resides in this artifact," he says, trying to seem obsequious but only sounding strained. "I am destined to wield it and bring balance to the Universe. Think of all the deaths I could send you. Millions of deaths. As a tribute to your beauty."

This gives Hela pause. She cocks her head as if considering it. Could this bargain appeal to her? She didn't strike Loki as vain, but bloodthirsty as she is, she might just find the deaths agreeable. For a long, agonizing moment, Loki fears she will say yes. But Hela is nothing if not contrary.

"I'm not your lady," she says with a huff. "And I care little for deaths not wrought by my hand."

Thanos closes his monstrous gloved fist, but he makes one last appeal. "Give me the Tesseract," he growls. "And I might spare one of your brothers when I snap my fingers."

" _Spare_ them? Don't masquerade your threats as a bargain. Get out of my sight! There is nothing for you here."

"So be it," Thanos says, ominously, but Hela laughs.

She jumps down the terrace again, swords drawn. Loki runs over to the ledge to witness them colliding in mid-air. The blast is so fearsome it rocks the very foundations of the Palace. He has to look away. He does not want to see, yet he makes no move to run away like he planned to.

"He will kill her," he says, his voice strangled. "He cannot be defeated."

He will kill their sister, and then he will kill Loki. Thor will feel the need to avenge him, and all of Odin's children will die on the same day. He should have named a regent, back on the bridge. Heimdall, perhaps.

"Are you sure?" Thor says. He sounds amused. "I think she has a chance."

Loki opens his eyes, then. Down by the long, multicolored bridge, Hela is raining blow after blow on the mighty Titan. She never seems to miss, whereas his own hits rarely find their target. The one time when he does manage to strike her, his enormous fist connects with her face. She skids back without losing her balance. It should have broken her face in two, but she only touches her nose, wiping a single thread of dark blood. She huffs. This seems to spur her on: he will not touch her again. She slips away from his grasp, twirls away, recovers with acrobatic jumps, drawing him closer without leaving any openings. Thanos is wielding the Power Stone, but she strings him along like a cat plays with a mouse.

"What _is_ she?" Loki mutters in amazement.

"Somehow I'm a lot less ashamed about how much she was trashing me," Thor says, surprisingly upbeat for someone who's just lost an eye.

"You should get that looked after."

"In a minute! I'm watching the fight."

Hela has wiped out two of Thanos' acolytes with ease, their efforts utterly futile to distract her from her target. Her few surviving wraiths close in on the remaining two, swarming over them like frenzied insects.

"Call off your minions," Thanos demands when he notices he's standing alone.

"What's the matter?" she bites back, and grins at him. "Not so formidable on your own?"

She does snap her fingers to get rid of her undead minions, but she also pumps her fist in the air and an enormous iron column emerges from the sea, impaling itself on the spaceship and piercing it through the middle. The engines whirl and sputter before coming to a halt with a pitiful groan. The water all around them rocks as the vessel sinks under the sea, the ripples forming a wave that crashes on the nearby shore.

"It seems like you're marooned here," she taunts. "How will you get away now?"

"With the Stone," he says, nonplussed. "My ability to travel will be limitless after I reclaim it."

Hela snorts, but despite her advantage over Thanos, it is also obvious that she isn't making much progress to defeat him. Her blows keep him at bay but do not fatally injure him. She has not drawn blood when her pride demands a swift resolution: Loki can tell she's growing impatient. Will she grow careless too? Will she tire at all? For now, down by the long bridge, his sister draws to a halt, and stands very still even as Thanos approaches her, seemingly considering her next move.

"Princess," he tells her, shaking his head. "Why this needless fight?"

"I'm the _Queen_ of Asgard, impertinent sack of bricks. Are you inclined to forfeit already?"

"Not at all. But it seems like an enormous waste of energy to quarrel like this. We could be allies."

"I have no allies. Only subjects."

"Let me tell you about my planet," he begins, but Hela cuts him off.

"I don't care where you come from. Fight me or die, I have no interest in your musings."

"I once heard of the magnificence of Asgard, while Odin reigned," Thanos insists, his fists closed tight. "What happened? Look at your lands, weighed down by worthless inhabitants, polluting your fields, eating away your resources. What good are they? They do not even fight for you."

Hela does not answer. The ensuing silence is terrible, deathly. Loki holds his breath.

"Kill half of them," Thanos argues, "and return these lands to their ancient splendor."

"Half of them," Hela repeats, thoughtfully. "Half of Asgard."

She raises her arms. The ground shifts so violently Thor and Loki are thrown off balance against the walls of the Palace. The earth beneath them groans like a living thing, lifting up and down and sideways, leaving enormous cracks on the marbled floor.

"What is this? What is she doing?" Thor shouts, struggling to stay upright.

Loki manages to steady himself on one of the central columns and offers his hand to help him up. They cling to each other, but soon find themselves horizontal again, for the shaking is only growing stronger.

"Heimdall said she draws her power from Asgard!" he tells Thor, shouting to make himself heard above the formidable sounds of quake. "I think she's sapping it directly."

"She's going to throw us off orbit if she keeps this up! We need to get out of here!"

They make their way out of the Palace, just barely, arm under arm to keep their balance as they run. On the bridge, Hela's power manifests as a flash of gold, like Midgard's sun at its highest, and when she lets out a scream the very edges of Asgard _lift_ , as if one were folding a piece of paper. Two enormous chunks of the land break away and Loki watches, mesmerized, as they disintegrate into pulverized rock and ice. If they survive this day, Asgard will have twin rings around its mass. He can barely see her now, her radiance too blinding, but her strike on Thanos's head is monumental. The Titan wavers. He falters. He falls.

Destroyed.

Loki shouts in triumph. But across from what's left of Thanos, Hela collapses too. He doesn't know what makes him run towards her; gratitude, perhaps? Relief, fraternal fondness, in spite of all? Loki sprints down the bridge, ignoring Thor's calls for caution, and manages to pull Hela into his arms. She is as white as a sheet and cold to the touch, limp, weakened, but still alive.

"Thank you," he whispers. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor and Loki try to work out what to do while Hela recovers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is rather short because I had to split it in two. One more left, it should be up soon - by next weekend or so!

 

* * *

 

Loki takes it upon himself to sit by Hela on Odin's bed, where they placed her after the battle. This room survived the cataclysm, unsurprisingly, perhaps: a monarch's room ought to be the safest in a palace.

"Funny," Thor says. "You never struck me as a nurse type of fellow."

"Shut up."

"No, really! I'm a little jealous. Somehow I don't think you'd sit there so devotedly if I were the one injured."

"Maybe I would," Loki tells him, and means it.

Thor can handle the rebuilding of the realm. Loki figures he'll be more useful here, in case she gets better and awakens to a murderous rage. Hela seems to be trapped in some kind of Odinsleep, though not as deep as their father's. Still pale, still weakened, she fades in and out of consciousness, sometimes for days at a time, and when she rouses up she lies there, silent, unmoving. Absent. One day she opens her eyes and stares at Loki in confusion before slipping back to sleep. The next time she opens her eyes, he cloaks himself in Odin's form as he appeared to them in Norge.

"I regret it, my child," he tells her, and tries to tuck some strands of her long hair behind her ears.

"I know it's _you_ ," Hela says, her voice raspy, glaring at him as she whips her head away.

"Sorry. It was worth a try." Loki transforms back into himself. "But he did say it, you know. Before he died. He asked us to tell you that he regretted it."

"I have no use for regrets now," Hela says, and turns away from him.

She seems miniscule under the many furs they've covered her with, adrift in this boat-shaped bed too large for her. There's an eeriness to her frailty, for one who was so proud and powerful. She's trying to do something with her hair, likely the horns, but all she manages are two pigtails, more fit for a little maiden than for the Goddess of Death. It's... _cute_ – a word Loki never thought he'd use to describe Hela.

"He also said he loved you," Loki insists.

"I don't care."

"Don't you?"

She stays silent for so long Loki wonders if she's drifted back to sleep. He's reminded of his mother, of another conversation by the side of this very bed. Frigga tried so hard to make him believe Odin loved him. Loki thinks she meant well, but back then he needed to hear it from him, not from his mother. His father's confession on his dying breath came far too late – it did not undo the anguish of many years or lessened his own regrets – yet Hela was denied any semblance of it.

"I wish he'd been the one to tell you that himself," he tells her gently, in case she is still awake.

"Maybe he will, soon. After I die."

"You aren't dying," Loki assures her, though his heart shrinks at the possibility. _Can_ she die? Can Death die, if She wills it so? Hela rolls again towards him. Her gaze is still icy, but there's a somberness in it that makes it hard for Loki to hold it without flinching.

"It wouldn't have changed anything," she says. "If he said it." She closes her eyes.

"I think it would have."

Loki stands up to leave the room and let her continue resting, but he doesn't make it far on his way to the door before she speaks again, her voice already sluggish with sleep.

"You smell like him. What did he do to you?"

"Nothing," he answers, too quickly perhaps.

"You know, for a god of mischief you're a terrible liar," she says, and this time she does fall back asleep.

 

* * *

 

"She draws her power from Asgard, but defeating Thanos was too great an effort for her in her physical form," Heimdall explains when Loki seeks him. "Once she realized that, she had to break Asgard itself to vanquish the Titan, wounding the bark of Yggdrasil in the process. The exertion hampered her own strength significantly. We are fortunate that she only saw fit to break the edges of Asgard, and not destroy all of it in her wrath."

Fortunate. That's one way to put it. The landscape has been altered beyond recognition, and the rebuilding alone will take years. The edges of Asgard were relatively uninhabited, at least, and when the cataclysm began few lives were lost out there.

"So you're saying her strength is dwarfed now?" Thor asks, ever practical. "By how much? One-third? One-half?"

"I would wager one-half, though if I were you I would not endeavor to find out."

"Good," Thor says, cheerfully. "I can probably take her on at one-half, if she causes trouble again."

"Ha! You wish." Loki scoffs. "Can her power grow back, Heimdall?"

"I find that unlikely. It was dispersed, not unlike the chunks of land she tore from Asgard and that now surround us. Once spent, power cannot be pieced together again. I think her current chagrin comes from knowing she did this to herself, out of pride, to win a fight that was ultimately insignificant for her greater designs."

"It was more than just some fight," Loki says, allowing some heat into his voice. "By killing Thanos she's saved us all. Not just us in Asgard. The entire Universe." He turns towards Thor. "Not all heroes behave like your Midgard friends, but they are heroes nevertheless."

"I don't think you know what that word means. She tore my eye out. She tried to _kill_ me."

"So did I, several times. Well, to kill you, not the eye thing – not really my style."

"I know you did. She's found a powerful bard in you to sing her praises," Thor says, his tone a little dry.

Heimdall lets out a sound that Loki would describe as a chuckle, if he suspected the All-seer was capable of such a thing. He turns to stare at him, but the other man's face remains impassive.

"I think Loki's enthusiastic gratitude comes from knowing far more than us about whatever plans Thanos had for the Universe," he says.

"Then tell us," Thor demands, and he sounds like his younger, arrogant self that Loki hated so much. "If I'm to call her a hero, I want to know what it is she saved us from."

Loki stays silent. He turns around and leaves the room. He'd rather have his tongue pulled out than to tell them how he came to know of Thanos's designs.

 

* * *

 

Thor _finds_ him, which is rather impressive. Loki perfected the art of cloaking himself to sulk in peace when they were children. He's either grown a little careless or Thor's become a lot better at detecting his imprint. His brother sits right next to him in what used to be their mother's garden (during his short-lived reign, Loki made sure it was tended to every day) and looks straight in his direction. If Loki were visible, their gazes would meet. He relents, then, and materializes with a sigh.

"I need to up my game," he says.

Thor grins at him. "Maybe you wanted to be found."

"Maybe," Loki concedes, and extends his arm towards one of the flowers. A butterfly draws near and ghosts over his fingers. Frigga always loved butterflies.

"I'll only ask you one question about him." Thor doesn't need to say of whom he speaks, though he doesn't sound demanding like before. "Did he hurt you?"

"More than words can say." Loki averts his eyes. The butterfly flies away, as if sensing his darkening mood. "But you must know: I sought him willingly at first, and I also chose to obey."

"To hurt me," Thor completes.

"To hurt you, and our father, and Asgard, and everyone in the Nine Realms." He sighs. "I think a part of me will always want that."

"Even now?"

"Even now." He meets Thor's gaze. Loki does not expect him to understand the extent to which he craves for mischief, for chaos, for destruction. Yet there's a hint of forgiveness in his brother's lone sea-blue eye, so he adds, "But now I know that doing so would hurt me too."

"How many more times are we going to play this game, you and I?" Thor asks. He sounds genuinely pained.

"Not many, I think," Loki answers, lighthearted, but sobers up when he sees how Thor flinches. "I'm past those games now," he says, as solemnly as he can manage.

"I hope so."

Thor puts a hand on his shoulder and pulls him closer against him. His hugs have always been hearty, rib-crushing, but this one has a wistful softness to it, as if Thor were uncertain that it would be well-received. Stiff at first, Loki relents and leans against him. He pats his brother's thigh. They've come a long way.

"I'm not the idiot you take me to be, you know," Thor says. "I do know something about the Stones. I had a vision, though I didn't understand it then – it spoke of extinction. Of death and ruin. He didn't want them to do good, that much is clear."

"No, but he'd argue the opposite," Loki admits. "He could have had unlimited power with all the six Stones together. Yet all he wanted was to wipe out half the Universe in the name of balance, or fairness, or whatever he talked himself into believing."

"Half the Universe," Thor repeats, marking a pause as he takes in the meaning of that. "Well. That would have been... a bit not good."

"Yes, quite. He could have come earlier for the Space Stone, if he had any sense – when I was reigning. He said there'd be no place in the Universe where he wouldn't find me. But what do you know: instead of me, he found Hela. He found my _sister_."

He probably shouldn't laugh, given how narrowly he escaped at all, but he does anyway. His sister. Why, it seems fraternal affection for Thor is less of an anomaly as he's led himself to believe.

"What are we going to do about her?" Thor asks, playing with the butterfly that has just returned. "I'm not terribly keen to fight her again. I'm kind of running out of eyes."

"She _is_ the rightful heir, unfortunately."

"I know that. But we can't let her rule, hero or not." Thor lets out a shaky sigh. "She's just... the worst."

"So who does that leave us? _You_? I thought you didn't want to rule. You told me so yourself."

Thor glares at him. "You mean I told my father, not knowing it was you. No, I still don't want it. But if I must do it, I will."

"What about Midgard? What about Jane?"

"Jane and I are no longer together."

Loki starts at this. Frigga died defending Jane (and the Aether, and Asgard, yes, he has to remind himself of this to quell the white flash of rage that flushes through him). Thor defied his father's orders for her. Renounced the throne, expected to have Mjolnir taken from him. Was that not enough? What could his brother not give her? It was supposed to last forever - or at least until she died. He stares at him, searching for answers, but Thor looks resigned.

"Humans can be fickle, I suppose," Loki says, with more contempt than he planned. More butterflies have joined the first, circling around them in long ribbons of gold and silver.

"That's rich coming from you." Thor shakes his head. "Even if we were still together, I'd do what's right for Asgard. It's what father would have wanted."

"Odin wanted many things," Loki says. "I'm not sure any of them are good for us in the long term. Midgard still needs you. Your friends need you."

Thor lets out a long sigh, opens his mouth as if to speak, but shuts it again. He clenches his jaw. "Well, what about you?" he says eventually, half reluctant, half hopeful. "Heimdall says you weren't half bad at it."

"Me?" Loki rolls his eyes. "You mean, how I stopped protecting the Nine Realms and neglected the army so outrageously that a single person took over the kingdom as if she were walking through butter?"

"Well, in your defense, that single person was freakishly strong. You'll get better."

Loki can't help a chuckle. "I used to dream about this moment, you know. You, admitting I'd make a good king and offering the throne to me. Now that it finally happens, the throne is not yours to give." He shakes his head. "I can't fight her. You heard Heimdall. The land is hers to command – with that kind of power, she'd bury me under rubble far too easily. Short of destroying what's left of Asgard, I don't see how she can be stopped."

"I think she's fond of you. Just a little bit? Maybe you can reason with her. Do your little weaselly thing and persuade her to listen to you." Loki shoves him to shut him up, half-heartedly. "What! You're good at it! Gets _me_ every time."

"Maybe."  Loki sighs and stares down at his hands. A single silver butterfly rests on his palm, its wings fluttering skittishly against his wrist.  "Maybe we can come to an arrangement."


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Negotiations, with some reptile shenanigans...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter!

 

* * *

 

Hela is wide awake when Loki visits her next. She's sitting on Odin's bed, cross-legged and alert, and she wills a blade out of her hand as soon as she sees him. Loki expected a long sword, her favored weapon, but she only produces a very small dagger, dark like her hair. She stares at it in confusion for a split moment and then throws it his direction with vicious force. He dodges it, just barely.

"Nice to see you're feeling better," he tells her, and sits on the edge of the bed.

"You should have killed me while I slept," she growls. "Why didn't you?"

"I told you. Regicide is frowned upon in Asgard these days."

_Regicide_. He lets that sink in. Hela stares at him, disbelieving, and then narrows her eyes. She does manage to make horns for herself this time: not the beautiful, elaborate antlers of before, but the round, sturdy horns of a ram. Not unlike the ones Loki favors. He doesn't know how to feel about that.

"Cease your tricks, silver-tongue creature," Hela says with a hiss. "What use would this realm have for a broken queen, weak, impotent, unable to conquer new territories for the glory of Asgard?"

"Plenty of uses! You're still freakishly strong, as Thor so quaintly remarked," he protests. But Loki does suspect she made only a dagger because she isn't strong enough for a long sword – just like her new horns as well.

She bares her teeth at him, the hate raw in her eyes. "I hope you're happy. Destroying that titan of yours has cost me all of my plans, has left me without purpose, has robbed of my destiny! Killing me in my sleep would have been a mercy!"

"I _am_ happy," Loki says. "And very thankful. Imagine my luck: instead of a brother incessantly fighting against me, I now have a sister to fight _for_ me."

"Fight for you, you useless worm? I should have killed you myself when I had the chance, to be rid your stupidity!"

"I agree, you should have. Why didn't you?"

Hela takes a deep breath, as if about to launch into a new tirade, but something seems to hold her back. She stays silent. Loki decides to push his luck and reaches for one of her hands. She recoils from him like a temperamental feline and materializes a new dagger. He has just enough time to pull his hand back before she sinks it on the duvet. Feathers fly everywhere, and Loki laughs.

"I think you'd be sorry," he teases. "I think you need someone to monologue with. You'd be bored without an audience."

"You are not irreplaceable," she says with a huff.

"Perhaps not. But I'm the best you're going to get." He flashes her a smile, and she glares at him before looking away. "You aren't broken," he tells her, growing serious. "And Asgard has plenty of uses for you yet. You've shown us how risibly vulnerable we are to an invasion. That's probably my fault. But you could train the soldiers. Show them how to defend the realm properly, instead of dying by the hundreds like headless poultry when a threat is too formidable."

"Train the soldiers like a cripple, or a bumbling old fool?" She draws a new dagger that she hands Loki. "Kill me now. It'll be quicker."

"No thank you. I've got my own." Loki waves away her black dagger, and produces one of his own. Made out of ice. "You know, for years I wondered why it was easier for me to conjure frozen blades." He wills it away. "He never told me. He meant to use me as a pawn and then threw in my face that he'd done me a kindness in letting me live."

"So you hate the old man," Hela says. "Join the queue."

She smiles at him in earnest for the first time that day. Loki grins back at her.

"If it's the killing you'll miss, Asgard still has plenty of enemies. Millions of them, I'd wager. Thor hunts them down for sport across the Universe. I think you two are more alike than you think. You could have a lot of fun together."

He chuckles at the thought of Hela and Thor traveling together, destroying enemies, and driving each other mad with their radically different approaches of making war. He'd give anything to see that. Thor would be begging for his company after the first outing.

"Do you take me for a fool?" Hela says. "Don't you think I can see how convenient it would be for you to be rid of us and seize the throne while I'm away from Asgard?"

"Would it be so terrible, sharing the throne with us?" Loki says, and keeps his tone light.

"A throne is not meant to be shared. It is my birthright and mine alone."

"It should have been, had your father been just. But now we are three. Are we destined to tear each other to pieces, like he raised us to do? I'm tired of his shadow. Aren't you?" Hela doesn't answer. She looks away from him. At least she's considering it. At least she hasn't killed him yet. "Last I looked, there's plenty of space in the throne room for three chairs," Loki insists, and he can't keep the mirth from his tone.

"Absurd! Tell me one good reason why I shouldn't tear you and your golden brother to pieces or die in the attempt."

Loki could say, 'because you're weaker than before, and if Thor and I join forces, we may cripple you a little more, tediously, until Asgard is reduced to a tiny rock and your strength all depleted,' but his silver tongue is, unlike what others might think, not turned to lead yet.

"Because that's what Odin would have wanted. He said it's a cycle that cannot be broken. There's nothing I'd love more than to prove him wrong."

There's no lie in there. One last ' _fuck you'_ to their father is Loki's only bargaining piece, and she more than any of the three of them would value it like it deserves. Hela meets his gaze. She lets her hair cascade down her back again, slowly, cautiously, staring at Loki as she does.

"I am still the Queen of Asgard," she states. She may be weaker, but she is no less proud.

"Of course you are the Queen. But not a tyrant. It's tricky." He smirks. "Believe me, it took me a while to get it right."

"And I suppose you would fancy yourself a king too, in this happy little scenario of yours?"

"Indeed. One queen, two kings. What could possibly go wrong?"

"Is that why he's standing there, lurking in the shadows and spying on us?"

Loki turns around to find Thor by the door, unnoticed by him until then. His brother is trying hard to remain inconspicuous, but he's not made for this kind of games. He looks almost oafish, trying to flatten himself against the door. Thor sighs when he sees he's been discovered.

"Sorry," he says, cautious as he steps in the bedroom. "You were so quiet all of a sudden I was worried you might have killed him."

"Not yet," Hela says, and though she's dead serious Loki can tell she's teasing. She's a little more tense in Thor's presence, but she doesn't look about to strike.

"Not for now?" he offers.

"Not for now," she agrees. "But maybe later."

"I can live with that," Loki tells her, and smiles.

  


 

* * *

 

Hela sits stiffly across the table from him, regal even in quiet moments like this. Between them lies a scroll that Loki has unfolded, depicting a great map of Yggdrasil. The contents of the library survived the wreck of Asgard, the ancient enchantments to preserve the Knowledge of the Nine Realms activating at once when the cataclysm began. But whereas the books and other artifacts were temporarily stored in a pocket dimension, the physical building suffered some substantial damage. Loki has been helping them reshelve whenever he has enough time to spare.

Nine Realms and three heirs: in all fairness, they should get three each, but Hela will never renounce six in the first place. Loki counts himself lucky that she is humoring him enough to have this conversation at all. Niflheim along with her namesake is hers by birthright, and after defeating Surtur Muspelheim is also hers by right of conquest. No need to quarrel over Svartalfheim, desolate and wasted, though Loki suspects she'd rather like it there. She'll never give up Asgard, though he's been around her enough to know she won't concern herself with courtly matters, or the council, or the finances (and neither will Thor, for that matter): it's effectively Loki's to rule in all but in name. If she doesn't know that already, he won't bring it to her attention.

"I promised you Midgard," Hela says, and throws at a dagger at the scroll. Loki stops it swiftly before it damages the parchment, but not before it cuts his palm. He glares at her.

"Only if I served you," he says, sucking on the wound to seal it faster. "I don't think I've held up my end of the bargain."

"Haven't you?" Hela teases. Her smirks should not be this terrifying. Nevertheless, Loki smiles back. "It's yours, if you still want it," she adds.

He stares down at the planet's representation on the map. Midgard lies there, blue and round and ripe for the taking. Loki shakes his head. "Let Thor keep it," he says. "He'll fuss too much otherwise."

"We can't have that," she agrees, but it sounds like she's mocking his regard for their brother. Loki shrugs as he goes back to his contemplation of the map: let her. He cares not.

"I don't know what to make of Nidavellir," he says, thoughtfully. The name tastes bitter. "Heimdall says Thanos laid waste to it for the gauntlet. The Dwarves have been wiped out entirely."

One of his endless shortcomings as the ruler of the Nine Realms, and the one that weighs on him the heaviest. He more than any should have known the Dwarves were in danger, aware as he was of the depths of Thanos' brutality. Instead of his usual cold pragmatism, the Titan slaughtered them all when they refused him, women, children, all of them. And too preoccupied with reigning over Asgard, Loki did not hear the calls for help. He should have. Odin would have. Dwarven craft is irreplaceable across the Universe.

"I saw that," Hela says. "They came to Niflheim all at once, though I didn't concern myself with them. They're too useful to be all dead." She slams her fist on the table. It leaves a deep, hand-shaped dent on the wooden surface. "Done. They're back."

Loki stares at her. "Can you do that?"

"I still rule over the Dead, no matter the state of Asgard. The old bastard made sure I'd be useful to him in my exile. A poisoned crumb, if you will."

He frowns. "So the Eternal Flame was not how you did that...?"

"Do you think I need some fire to reign over what is mine? I'd make a poor Goddess of Death if that were the case." She smirks at him. "What's the matter, Trick-master? I thought _you_ of all people would see through a trick."

"Let's say I was preoccupied with other matters at the time to truly ponder it," he says, his pride piqued just enough to glare at her.

A trick, she says. A temporary conduit or vessel for her arts, like a staff for a sorcerer, or a spear for a warrior – yes, he can understand that. But if she truly can bring back people from the dead on a whim, that opens a whole realm of possibilities Loki isn't sure he can process in one sitting.

"Could you... My mother. Could you...?" Loki doesn't finish his sentence, his throat too dry to continue speaking at the thought of Frigga.

"No," Hela says, catching his meaning. "She is beyond my reach now."

"Oh." Knowing that his mother is truly gone does not make it any easier to accept it, though Loki is quick to hide his disappointment with more questions. "Well, how about others? There was an unfortunate amount of casualties the day of your _glorious_ return. Maybe some of them could be brought back from the Dead in time for our coronation?"

"Sentimental fool." She scowls at him. "You're worse than your brother, at least he wears his heart on his sleeve." She makes a gesture with her hand, and he follows the movement in vague fascination, unsure whether she's resurrecting them just then or simply adding emphasis to her words. "Aesir are more difficult than other folk: they cannot be forced back. But if they will it so, they may."

"Very generous of you, Your Majesty," he teases, though he is mostly sincere.

Right. Nidavellir: Thor, a longtime friend of the Dwarves, might be a better Protector than Hela, though Loki finds it distasteful to put his brother's name forward a second time. In any case, their coronation can finally take place now, having been delayed since there was no one left to forge three crowns fit for the All-Father's children. He glances down at the map again. Vanaheim is next. Back when he believed his father's lies, Loki fancied himself more Vanir than Aesir (more Frigga's than Odin's), enchanted as he was by their love of old magic, of artistic simplicity, of knowledge imbued with Yggdrasil's fragrance. It would be fitting, as Frigga's beloved son, for Loki to become their Protector. He is considering his next words to make his case against Thor's when Hela speaks, startling him.

"You shouldn't be ashamed."

"Of what?"

"Of what you truly are." She reaches forward and closes her hand around his wrist. Her grip is not gentle, though the gesture is unthreatening (or as unthreatening as Hela can manage, which is not a lot). Instead of bruising, Loki's skin turns blue under her fingers. Not truly, of course, but he sees it clearly, like a flash before his eyes, before reality is restored.

"Stop that," he hisses, but he cannot pull his hand back. "I'm not ashamed. Disgusted is more like it."

"It would make you stronger. Harder to defeat."

"I'm not planning to be in any battles in the near future," Loki says with a smirk, and manages to wriggle his wrist free. "I've got _you_ for that."

"Better start planning, then. I'm giving you Jotunheim."

Being stabbed in the gut would feel no less sickening. It's too cruel, even for her. Loki gapes at her, breathless, mouth hanging open. It's very much like her, though, isn't it? To strike brutally, hard and fast, leaving the opponent with little chance of a true comeback.

"Are you mad? I don't want it. I told you. I don't want it! I hate it," he protests, too betrayed for eloquence.

"Well, it's yours. Do with it as you please. You know I don't care if you destroy it, though your darling brother might feel otherwise."

"No. There's nothing for me there! Give me Vanaheim or Alfheim instead."

"Have them, then. But Jotunheim as well."

Loki blasts a spell at her, angry enough to transform her into a toad, but all it manages to do is turn her hair into black serpents, hissing and coiling in different directions. He's surprised it worked at all: a few weeks earlier, nothing would have happened. She _is_ weaker. Hela grabs one of the snakes between her fingers and brings it closer to her face to examine it, surprised but not outraged. She probably likes them. Loki grunts in frustration.

"I thought you were tired of his shadow?" she asks, raising an eyebrow, unbecomingly nonplussed for someone with a head full of snakes. "Why keep the body he chose for you? I'd have thought you'd prefer to renounce it instead of being daddy's little boy. A bloodhound ensnared in a kitten's shape."

"I happen to like this body," Loki says, angrier because what she says makes perfect sense, but he cannot - _will_ not - admit it, and also because his infuriating curiosity is spinning madly in his head ( _stronger how? harder to defeat how?_ ). "You don't get to dictate what I want to look like, or why I choose it."

"Hm," she says, clearly unconvinced.

Loki stabs one of his daggers on the scroll, right where Jotunheim lies. The librarian might slap him for this later, but he doesn't care. He stands up with enough force to make the chair crash down and walks away from the desk, fists closed. He could do it, he supposes: wear his Jotun form on the throne, terrorize Asgardians, stomp on Odin's last gift. The populace tolerated his plays and his poems where his true origin was common knowledge, are they capable of more than that? Loki hasn't indulged in this particular vein of self-hatred in years. He paces back and forth to the window, knocking over books on the nearby shelves on his way.

"If your tantrum is to go on for much longer, do you mind changing my hair back now?" she asks, sounding bored. "It doesn't go with my clothes, I think it would be better suited for special occasions."

"Keep your serpents! They suit you perfectly, sweet sister."

"Why are you all twisted up in arms about it? You'll still have a place in Asgard at my right."

"Will I?" Loki walks back to the table, towering over her. "Are you stupid? If I let myself be what I am... What place do I have here? If I am Laufey's son, I'm no longer your brother."

The smack shocks him, not just because it was unexpected but because her sheer strength is still formidable. Loki forgot about that. He can't even defend himself when she stands, hitting him on the back of the head with a blow so great it's a wonder it doesn't split his skull in two. He loses his balance and lands on his knees.

"Not my brother! You _are_ an idiot," Hela says, sounding furious for the first time that evening.

Her kick flattens him on the floor. His first instinct is to disappear, but seeing her head full of serpents reminds him, unwisely perhaps, that she is not like she once was. It would make you stronger, she said, harder to defeat. In his anger, he lets himself switch to his Jotun form. Hela doesn't seem startled, this time. Now that he's been made aware of it, he begins to perceive an unknown, foreign power roaring through him, coming to life for the first time. He can imagine it perfectly, as if plucking it straight from Hela's head: sparring with her, learning to fight under her guidance, blue against black, ice and death together. There's much _longing_ in that fantasy. It shocks him to find that not all of it is hers, but his own as well. But no, never. No. Not now. Maybe not ever. 

Deflated, Loki reverts to his Aesir form and tries a half-hearted kick in her direction. But Hela is swift to grab him by the foot and she drags him unceremoniously out of the study room. Loki yelps when his head bumps against the doorframe on their way out and resorts to making holes on the way to slow her. Foolishly, of course, since her own lands would never hinder her, and it only makes for an even bumpier ride for him. He materializes a dog to bite her, and a cat to wrap itself around her legs, but Hela trudges on, stubborn as a mule. They're causing quite a ruckus. The servants move out of their way, and short of turning himself into a goat Loki resigns himself to be dragged around the Palace like a miserable ragdoll. Until Thor appears, that is, barring her way and looking rather alarmed.

"Your brother is an idiot," Hela tells him, and throws Loki forward so that he skids on the floor to stop by Thor's feet.

"I know," Thor says, not missing one beat. "Nice hairdo," he adds, and dodges her punch, narrowly, before she turns her wrath on Loki.

"You say something like that again, you snotty soft-bellied slug, and I'll kill you and send you to a place not even I can get you back from."

"Yes, alright, you've made your point," Loki answers.

He manages a meek smile as he waves his hand to turn her hair back to normal. Hela walks away from them, muttering under her breath, and Loki lets out half a sigh of relief, half a nervous chuckle. He rolls onto his back.

"What was that about?" Thor asks, holding his hand out to help him up.

"We're letting you keep Midgard," Loki non-answers.

" _Letting_ me?" his brother repeats, his voice dropping into a growl.

"Yes. And possibly Nidavellir." Come to think about it, it worked out rather well, didn't it? Loki did manage to worm several realms out of her hands: three or four for him and maybe two for Thor. Excellent. "The Dwarves are back, by the way. We should send an envoy soon."

Thor shakes his head. "I don't like this one bit, you and her in cahoots like this behind my back."

"I assure you, brother dear, I've got nothing but your best interests at heart."

"Yes, that's what worries me precisely."

Loki laughs and takes his brother's hand to pull himself upright. Two Kings and a Queen. A triumvirate of Odin's children. What could possibly go wrong indeed?

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading if you made it this far! Leave a comment if you enjoyed it, it would mean the world to me! I'd love to keep writing for this verse, hopefully inspiration strikes.


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